$1b fund keeps vital signs ticking
OPINION: NZ First’s Shane Jones has a few things to prove when he takes the stage in Gisborne on Friday with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to launch the Government’s $1 billion a year regional development fund.
At a government level, the announcement of the first tranche of projects – worth perhaps
$70 million in total – will be an important ‘‘proof of life’’ moment for an administration that has spent a lot of time recently talking about what it will do, and announcing the reviews that will inform its eventual actions.
While it can claim legitimately to have fulfilled its 100-day plan, the impact on average and lowincome households is so far only significantly affected by the Families Package, which takes effect in July.
The regional development fund is a down payment on the Government’s intention to be a more active economic participant, seeking both to lead and to partner in the creation of new economic opportunities – especially in depressed regions where the robust national economic statistics are not borne out on the ground.
Some people will call it interventionism; others will call it a breath of fresh air.
At a party level, the regional development fund is vital to NZ First’s re-election prospects.
This week’s One News Colmar Brunton poll showed NZ First at
3 per cent support. Unless it can win at least one territorial electorate, that result on election night 2020 would see it out of Parliament.
Party leader Winston Peters lost his Northland electorate last September and is expected to depart as leader before the 2020 general election.
Jones, one of Peters’ possible replacements, has never won a territorial electorate, only ever representing first Labour and now NZ First, as a party list MP.
Obviously, a weak showing in a poll now is not a guide to polling day in 2 1⁄2 years, but the electoral clock is ticking and NZ First is focused on the potential for either National or Labour to eat its vote, especially in a post-Peters era.
There is also a personal dimension to Friday’s announcements.
Jones’s regional development, associate economic development and associate transport portfolios are a political gift for a politician who knows his party’s fate hangs on being seen as a vital part of the coalition and not a hanger-on.
He is regarding his ministerial warrants as a licence to smash through what he sees as bureaucratic inertia that has been stifling regional development opportunities, often for years.
Have a look in Friday’s announcements for progress especially on Gisborne, Hawke’s Bay and Northland rail projects, and a new high-value wood processing project in Gisborne.
The role also brings Jones into close contact with Green Party ministers on climate change and conservation policy, especially where forestry and limited investment in water storage – as opposed to large-scale irrigation schemes – is concerned. At a deeper personal level, Jones is also out to squash the taunts from his political opponents that he doesn’t get stuff done.
Developing and deploying a billion-dollar annual economic development fund in a little over four months since the new Government was formed should be a jab in the eye to his critics.
Economic rationalists will squirm at the risks inherent in bigspending government interventionism, and the Taxpayers’ Union will bray predictably about ‘‘corporate welfare’’.
But in the current political climate, that is only likely to drive the new Government’s popularity among that large section of the public who have had enough of market rationalism and are willing to give activist government a go. The trick for Jones is to make sure that he and his party, not just Labour, get enough of the credit.
At a deeper personal level, Shane Jones is also out to squash the taunts from his political opponents that he doesn’t get stuff done.